Thank You Santa!

I guess I really was a good girl this year! Santa was very very good to me and Harrison! (and I was really good to Mom & Dad...I slept in until 8!). We came downstairs and saw a "really big dollhouse" just like I asked for and a huge train table for Harrison. I noticed that Santa had left a bite of cookie on his plate (so did Harrison...he ate it for Santa) and was proud of him for drinking his milk all gone. Then we got down to playing and opening presents...it took us a couple hours to get through everything! I had to do most of the unwrapping because Harrison wouldn't leave the train table to do anything else! He also discovered after a while that it's a lot easier to reach all the trains and pieces if he just climbs up and sits in the middle of the table.... We received a ton of great gifts from our friends and family...we wish you all could have seen how excited we were to get all of them. Thank you! (oh...and Mommy's favorite line of the day courtesy of me: "look at this present Mommy....it's got a bracelet inside!" -- good thing I didn't know what was in all the packages...apparently I'm not very good at this secret stuff!) And a big thank you to Amy, Scott and Abbey for our cute pajamas that we're wearing!

(I got a digital camera from Mommy & Daddy and had a lot of fun taking Daddy's picture!)

Here's the "aftermath of Christmas" picture....toys and paper everywhere, Harrison still playing trains, and me taking a little rest after all the hard work and excitement was done!

Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas Eve

Mom and Dad hosted Christmas Eve dinner at our house tonight for all our friends who were also staying in town for the holidays. Turns out a lot of our friends stayed in town....we had 14 grown ups and 9 munchkins! We had a really fun dinner and Mom & Dad's only disappointment was that they forgot to take pictures of the house all prettied up and the table was set so nicely (Daddy even polished silver!). Just take our word for it...it was pretty :). Us kids even did a really nice job playing with each other so that the adults could sit back and enjoy themselves. My friends Chloe & Allison and I started playing Doctor for a while and Dad got this really cute picture of the three of us...

Daddy's friends had a little surprise for him at the end of dinner too. For the past few months they've been secretly scheming and working discreetly with Mommy to collect some of Daddy's ribbons and patches and medals and they surprised him with a beautiful frame that displayed them all. It's a great way for Daddy to remember all that he did and accomplished in the Navy and he was very surprised and very touched and very grateful. (he was also relieved to know that this was why Mommy sometimes was evasive when answering questions about "who was on the phone")

I put together a big plate of cookies and a big glass of milk for Santa and now I need to get to bed because Mommy & Daddy said they think they heard his sleigh bells!

More Christmas Lights!

Daddy and I had a date last night. He took me downtown to see the lights along the Bricktown Canal. My friends Allison and Chloe came too with their daddies (and Chloe's mom too!) and we took a boat ride along the canal to look at the lights. They handed out fun 3-D glasses to make the lights look even more fun (Chloe and I had fun looking at each other with our glasses on....really, really, really close up). We survived a stalled boat and a head-on collision with another boat (don't worry when you're going 1 mph, it's not much of an impact!). It was a great night.

Oh Christmas Tree

Just a few pictures of us decorating the tree. I was very helpful at stringing lights (and keeping them away from Harrison) and Daddy even gave me the most important job of putting the angel at the top! Harrison thought it was all pretty exciting too....Mom & Dad just love the look on his face in his picture...

A video of me and the christmas cookies...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We got off to a bit of a late start with all of our Christmas preparations since we just got home last week, but we managed to catch up pretty quick! We spent most of the day Monday baking cookies. I was a really big help. I liked rolling out the dough and pressing out the shapes. I also thought I should take on the VERY important job of taste tester and made sure to regularly taste the dough and the finished product to make sure it was still good!

Harrison woke up from his nap and figured out what was going on and decided to help me make sure everything was turning out okay. Mom sure is hoping there's some cookies left to put out for Santa! Dad and I decorated the cookies (luckily Grandma let me practice on her cookies, so I definitely had the hang of it...I really love sprinkles!)

With most of the baking checked off of our list, we set out to find our Christmas tree. Every year we go to a tree farm and cut down our own (and every year once we get out there we wonder what we were thinking!....especially this year because we got there a little late so we had to hurry to find one before the sun went down...as you can see from the picture we did it just in the nick of time!). I really liked the little Charlie Brown type trees, but we eventually settled on a really tall one and I helped Daddy get it down ("what are you doing daddy? what's under there? let's take it home daddy, I really love it!")

We weren't sure if we were going to mess with Christmas lights this year or not, but every night we'd drive around to look at lights and then when we got home, I would say "but there's no christmas lights on Reagan's house" (imagine this with the saddest tone you could possibly imagine). Anyhow, my charm worked because Daddy got out the ladder yesterday and got to work making the house beautiful. Harrison and I helped by dragging most of our toys outside to occupy ourselves while they worked. I even helped Daddy hold the ladder and the hammer! We got a lit up train this year, so Harrison was pretty happy to just sit in his red car and look at that. We made a pretty good cheering squad. Dad finished up while we went in for dinner and baths and we got to go outside and see the lights when it got dark. I was soooo excited! I just ran around yelling "there's Christmas lights on Reagan's house! It's so pretty! This is the best ever! I love my daddy!" Needless to say, I was pleased. (and all the neighbor's kids came out to ooh and ahh at them too, so Daddy was very proud!)

So now the only thing left on my list is to keep being good because Santa is watching! Mom & Dad sure do like to remind me of that a lot!

Finally

For months now, Harrison has been learning new words...starting with da-da and moving on to bus, ball, truck, choo choo, cheese, etc. But finally today he managed to say "mama" and we were all there to witness it. Mommy is so happy!

Home Safe

4 weeks, 2 days, 12 states and an ice storm....we had a fantastic trip but are very happy to say that we are home!

Ice Ice Baby

Just to keep everyone updated...

We are in Kansas City waiting out the ice storm that has overtaken the midwest. We are grateful that we got this far in our trip before encountering any bad weather and we are grateful that of all places we are "stuck" in a hotel with a pool, room service, movies, and heat. It certainly could be worse! Things look promising for travel tomorrow, so if all goes well, we'll be home tomorrow afternoon!

South Dakota

We managed to fit a lot of things into the past week. We sadly said goodbye to Denver and headed up to Rapid City, South Dakota. This was probably my favorite hotel stop of the trip. They had a GIGANTIC indoor waterpark. Despite my initial reaction evidenced in the photo below, I actually managed to have a fantastic time. Dad and I had a great time riding around on the lazy river and Mom was brave enough to take me down the waterslides after Dad tested them out for us. One of them had a huge funnel that we circled around several times before finally getting sucked down the hole (backwards) for the remainder of the ride. This will definitely be a really fun place to go back to in a few years!

We packed up and headed the rest of the way to Grandma and Grandpa's house. I was so excited to see them! We had such a fun visit with them. We got to go to a wedding and visit all the relatives and we even played Christmas! Uncle Ryan came to visit too and I had a fun time playing with him. My favorite game was deciding in the morning that he had slept long enough, so I'd take my flashlight into the basement to go "wake up the bear in the cave!" I'm not sure it was Ryan's favorite game, but he was a pretty good sport about it. They had snow on the ground up there and Grandpa and Grandma had bought me a new sled (I called it a boat). Ryan, Grandma and Daddy all took turns pulling me around in it. We gave Harrison a ride too, but as you can see he didn't see the fun in the whole thing...

To top off all the spoiling, Grandma even baked me a chocolate cake for breakfast on our last morning at her house! They even put candles in it for me to blow out. Boy, I'm really going to miss them!

We drove over to Sioux Falls to see Aunt Christie and she had a fun surprise planned for us. She took us to the Butterfly House (this was especially nice because it was 74 degrees inside!). I loved watching all the butterflies and pointing them all out to everyone.

We're supposed to be heading home tomorrow, but it sounds like Oklahoma is getting hit with a pretty bad ice storm and there's no power and some bad roads back there. So we may try to get about halfway home and then make it the rest of the way on Tuesday when it warms up a bit. I'm really looking forward to getting back to "Reagan's house." I keep talking about all my toys, my friends, my school and my room. Mom & Dad seem ready to get back home too. We'll let you know when we get there!

Denver

We had another great car trip from Salt Lake City to Denver. Harrison and I are really getting the hang of this. (I will say however that I will be happy to never again hear the words "why don't you take a little rest?" and "can you hold it for a little while?" -- which means, uh oh the next rest stop is 20 miles away!). We stopped in Denver for the weekend and stayed with Mommy's best friend from forever Tessa and her husband Nayab. Their son Asher is my age and their daughter Nadia is just a little younger than Harrison. She is the cutest little baby and she had a total crush on my Dad! I loved to hold her and ooh and aah about how adorable she was and how much I love her! As you can see in the photos, Asher and I got along really well too. The mommies and daddies keep talking about us getting married, but for the time being all we cared about was playing trains and chasing each other around (and sometimes fighting, but we usually got over that pretty quickly!). Tessa took most of the pictures so we'll have to update this with more later when we get those from her, but we did manage to take a few...

Our favorite outing was when we went to the mall to see Santa Claus. I was so excited to see him and sit on his lap and tell him all the things I want for Christmas! Harrison, however, was not as enamored with the guy and let his feelings be known pretty clearly. You'll see that Asher's little sister felt the same way in their picture! (you may have to click on the picture to see it bigger)

Saturday night, their babysitter was kind (and brave) enough to take on all four of us kids while the grown ups spent a night out on the town. Sunday, was a pretty quiet day for the adults, but we all entertained ourselves quite well and had a wonderful day playing together. It was such a fun trip and we miss our friends already!